School of Design – The Grammarian’s Guide to Great Journaling 3
We’re halfway through our examination of the eight basic parts of speech, and this week, we’re going to take a look at interjections and conjunctions, two parts of speech that can bring structure and emotion to your journaling.
INTERJECTIONS: An interjections is a word or short phrase that is interjected, or added into, a sentence to convey emotion. It is usually not related to any other part of the sentence — in other words, it doesn’t modify other words in the sentence, as most parts of speech do.
Interjections are a great way to capture personality and add color to your writing. Here are a couple of techniques for you to try:
1) Capture a favorite saying. For most people, expressions they tend to use over and over function as interjections in their sentences. My oldest daughter has a habit of saying “Dadgum!” when she is frustrated about something. My husband and I crack up every time, because to us, it sounds like something you’d hear from an 80-year-old cantankerous old man, not a 15-year-old girl. Let these interjected phrases guide your journaling and provide you with a way to comment on the quirks of a person’s personality.
2) Think big. Interjections play a huge role in most comic books, peppering the illustrations with louder-than-life soundbites. Use an interjection as the title of your page; Decorator Rachel Alles uses one of Tiffany Tillman’s Comic Book wordarts for a fun page about t-ball.
CONJUNCTIONS: A conjunction is a part of speech that is used to link or connect words, phrases, and clauses. There are several different types of conjunctions; we’re going to take a look at coordinating and subordinating conjunctions.
Consider these tips and techniques for using conjunctions on your scrapbook layouts:
1) Emphasize relationships. Coordinating conjunctions can help you unify a page topic, or they can help you add a source of tension and opposition to your page — it all depends on which conjunction you. “And” creates a relationship, such as “peanut butter and jelly,” or “his and hers.” Using “but” sets your topics against each other, so that there’s a sense of competition on the page. “Or” provides you with alternates to consider. These three types of relationships can spawn ideas for page design, journaling topics, or points of view.
2) Show the passage of time during several events. This is another lesson we can learn from comic books. The panels in a comic strip convey action, so each block focuses on something specific. Words are fairly limited, so comic artists often use subordinating conjunctions, such as “meanwhile” or “however,” to reveal events that are happening while other things are taking place. If you’ve got lots of photos on a busy event-type layout, use a comic strip template and subordinating conjunctions to organize conflicting events.
